Larocque at Fort Mandan

In the fall of 1804, twenty-year-old François-Antoine Larocque went to work for the North West Company at Fort Assiniboine, which had been built in 1795 at the confluence of the Assiniboine and Mouse (Souris) Rivers, about 20 miles southeast of today’s Brandon, Manitoba. As a clerk, Larocque occupied the second rank in the structure of the fur-trading business. At the direction of the manager of the trading post—the bourgeois, or partisan—Larocque’s job was to take a supply of merchandise to the Mandans and Hidatsa villages at the mouth of the Knife River and remain there until his goods were all traded away for furs.

Larocque Meets Lewis

On 11 November 1804, Larocque and six companions, with nine horses, five of which were loaded with trade goods, set out for the Mandan settlements at the mouth of the Knife River on the Missouri.^[1]One of Larocque’s companions was a free trader named Charles McKenzie, who also kept a journal that contained many ethnographic details about the Mandan and Hidatsa people. W. Raymond Wood and … Continue reading The trade goods included tools such as axes, knives, awls, flints and steels for fire-starting, and a quantity of powder and ball. There was tobacco, too, and personal items such as combs and beads. Fourteen days later, on 24 November 1804, the party arrived at the middle Minitari (Hidatsa) village, known as Metaharta, where Larocque was to look up an interpreter named Toussaint Charbonneau—the very same Charbonneau who would be hired by Lewis and Clark the following 18 March 1805.^[2]Concerning the five Mandan and Hidatsa communities at the mouth of the Knife River, see Gary E. Moulton, ed., The Journals of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (13 vols., Lincoln: University of … Continue reading Charbonneau was not at home.

The next day, however, on the road to the nearby Mandan villages, young Larocque chanced to meet Charbonneau, the free trader René Jusseaume, and Meriwether Lewis. For about a quarter of an hour he chatted with Lewis, who invited him to Fort Mandan, “& appeared very friendly.”

But one of Larocque’s party, the interpreter Baptiste Lafrance, immediately spread rumors about the expedition’s purpose, and the captains issued a stern warning, through Larocque, of “the Consiquinces if they did not put a Stop to unfavourable & ill founded assursions &c. &c.”^[3]Clark, 26 November 1804.. Three weeks later the traders were still under suspicion, as Gass reported: “The object of the visits we received from the N. W., Company,” he says, “was to ascertain our motives for visiting that country, and to gain information with respect to the change of government.” What Larocque really wanted, as he would inform them toward the end of January, was to join the expedition and be a part of the adventure. But the captains were unwilling to share their geographical discoveries and information about Indian tribes that the North West Company or the British government could use against the United States, and they declined his offer.

Nevertheless, after a sour start, Lewis and Clark proceeded to provide Larocque with ample, if sometimes contradictory, details about their history and their aims.

A Second Visit

On 29 November 1804, Larocque visited the Americans’ still-unfinished Fort Mandan, ostensibly in search of Charbonneau, whom the captains had agreed to let the Canadian hire for a while. He was “very politely received by Captain Lewis and Clarke.”^[4]Fort Mandan was declared finished on 24 December 1804, according to Sergeant Patrick Gass. See also on this website the map create by the Captains after their visit from Larocque and other North West … Continue reading But rumors had outpaced him, and cordiality was tainted by suspicion on the Americans’ part. (Or was it just the older Americans’ reluctance to place much faith in a callow young man of twenty winters on his first big assignment in the fur trade?) Larocque recalled:

Just as I arrived, they were despatching a man for me, having heard that I intended giving flags and medals to the Indians, which they forbid me from giving in the name of the United States, saying that the Government looked upon those things as the sacred emblems of the attachment of the Indians to their country. As I had neither flags nor medals, I ran no risk of disobeying those orders, of which I assured them.

Lewis, still on the defensive, summoned Charbonneau and gave him permission to work for Larocque temporarily, but warned him not to say anything that might prejudice the Indians toward the United States or its citizens, even if Larocque ordered him to—which, Lewis said to the latter, “we are very far from thinking you would.”

Lewis’s Anglophobia was obvious, and Larocque’s companion, Charles McKenzie, took note of it. Early the following spring, McKenzie remarked in his journal that although the captains always cheerfully treated them with civility and kindness, it was nevertheless clear that “Captain Lewis could not make himself agreeable to us—he could speak fluently and learnedly on all subjects, but his inveterate disposition against the British stained, at least in our eyes, all his eloquence.” Clark was equally well informed, McKenzie recalled, “but his conversation was always pleasant, for he seemed to dislike giving offence unnecessarily.”

The expedition had been mounted by the United States government, Lewis explained, “for the purpose of exploring the North West countries to the Pacific Ocean, so as to settle the boundary line between the British and the American territories.” They showed him their passports and letters of recommendation from the French, Spanish, and British ministers to the U.S., attesting that the captains’ voyage was “purely scientific and literary, and in no way concerning trade.”

Then, according to Larocque’s recollection, the captains clearly spelled out Jefferson’s policies to their Canadian visitor, assuring him that “it was not the policy of the United States to restrain commerce, and fetter it as was the case when Louisiana belonged to the Spanish.” Nor, they said, would any trader be required to buy a government permit, as the Spanish demanded, since exclusive rights would not be granted. “Every one will be free to trade after his own manner,” he heard them say.

In short, concluded Larocque, “during the time I was there a very grand plan was schemed, but its being realized is more than I can tell, although the Captains say they are well assured it will.”^[5]W. Raymond Wood and Thomas D. Thiessen, eds., Early Fur Trade on the Northern Plains: Canadian Traders Among the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians, 1738–1818 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1985), … Continue reading

A Third Visit

Early in the afternoon of 30 January 1805, Larocque went to the captains’ quarters to see about having his broken compass repaired. While Lewis worked on it the rest of the day, they talked. “The captains are busy making charts of the country through which they had passed, and delineating the Head of the Missouri according to the information they had from the Indians, who described a river as being four days march west of the last navigable part of the Missouri, which river, they say, is very large.” The old legend of a day’s portage across a “height of land” between the two great rivers had begun to crumble.

. . . I Remain’d here a Couple of days, being pressed so to by the Captains. They took observations for the Longitude & Latitude of the place while, I was with them, & often since their arrival here. They differ much from Mr. [David] Thompson, in the Longitude of this place, & say that Mr. Thompson has placed these villages, & this part of the river, a great deal too westerly, which they think is the Case, with all his observations for the Longitude; they observed some time ago an Eclipse of the moon which they say is an Infallible rule for finding the Exact Longitude of a place. But they do not differ from him in the Latitude.^[6]See also on this website, Fort Mandan Observations by Robert N. Bergantino.Also, Arlen Large, “Fort Mandan’s Dancing Longitude,” We Proceeded On, Vol. 13, No. 1 (February 1987), … Continue reading

Thompson, who had been at the Mandan villages in 1798, calculated their longitude at 101° 14′ 24″ West, which is roughly 11 miles east of their actual position at 101° 27′ West, whereas Lewis’s calculation placed them at 99° 26′ 45″ West, or about 122 miles too far east. But Lewis, realizing that his chronometer was running slow, later had second thoughts about the accuracy of his own calculations.

Lewis further mentioned to Larocque that the boundary of Louisiana Territory might extend as far north as the mouth of the Qu’ Appelle River at the Assiniboine River. In fact, Clark’s first composite map, compiled during the Fort Mandan winter, showed the Souris and Missouri River drainages coming within but a few miles of one another in the vicinity of the Knife River villages—actually it’s about 30 miles (48 km)—which meant that the boundary there was the Coteau du Missouri, well south of the 50th parallel.

Furthermore, Clark showed the White Earth River beginning about two degrees (140 miles) north of the Qu’ Appelle’s source, when in fact it rises just below 48° 39′ North. It joins the Assiniboine in western Manitoba at approximately 50° 27′ North. It is the Milk River, whose northernmost tributaries begin at around 49° 15′ North, that actually defined the northernmost boundary of Louisiana Territory at that time. The whole question became moot in 1818, when the 49th parallel was officially established as the boundary between the United States and Canada from the Great Lakes to the Rockies.

The Souris (Mouse) River Country

Isaac Stevens, in the report on his exploration of possible routes for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Pacific, wrote of the Souris, or Mouse, River:

High ridges divide the plateau bordering the stream from that extending into the prairie, with coulées intersecting it and opening into the river on the one side, gradually growing imperceptible as they make into the prairie on the other. The general course of the river, and of its principal branch, the Riviere des Lacs, is nearly parallel to that of the Missouri, for the distance we followed it, of eighty-seven and a half miles to its source,^[8]Evidently they didn’t quite reach the Souris’s source. It begins a short distance west of Carnduff, Saskatchewan, about 10 miles (17 km) north of the U.S.-Canada border. The Riviere des … Continue reading and separated from that river by the Plateau du Missouri, varying from thirty-five to fifty-five miles in width. Many of the coulées reach to the edge of the Missouri plateau; and in the examination for a good passage for the wagon train, secluded spots were found where beetling crag and winding stream, venerable trees and greenest sward combined in scenes of much picturesque beauty.

Its valley is from half a mile to a mile wide, about two hundred feet below the prairie level, and is well wooded with maple, oak, ash, and elm. The deep coulées run back from it for fifteen or twenty miles, and must be avoided by keeping far from the river itself. They usually contain a stream of good water, and sufficient timber on the banks for camping purposes. One of the bluffs of the cateau, twenty miles from the Mouse river, was found by Mr. Moffett to be seven hundred and two feet above its level, and a hill seven miles from camp rose to two hundred and fifty-six feet.^[9]Stevens, 84.

The Stevens expedition, incidentally, traveled by wagon train: “Our experience thus far had shown how well adapted ox-trains were to transportation.”

Larocque’s Yellowstone Exploration

On 2 June 1805, the day Lewis and Clark arrived at the mouth of the Maria River, Larocque set out for “a voyage of discovery to the Rocky Mountains.” His assignment was to visit the Crows in their homeland and determine whether reports of an abundance of beaver were true, and if so, to teach the Indians to trap them and preserve the pelts for the traders to come. That story is told in Larocque’s Yellowstone Journey.